Milk Testing Recap 2023-2024

I recently read Misadventures in Milk Testing and let me tell you, it is easy to forget what a rocky start I had! It is hard to believe 2025 will be my fourth year milk testing! In 2023, I milked 6 does for most of the year. I milked:

GoGo’s LoSt Pixie Dust

Hefty Goat Holler Pearl

Hefty Goat Holler Storm

Hefty Goat Holler Rhea 

Hefty Goat Holler Beryl The S. Demeyer Genovese

I was absolutely determined I was going to give these girls a fair shot. I was still dam-raising but I also milked on no fill when I needed to, especially with Storm since she was producing so heavily but had only birthed a single. The majority of the girls kidded in February so I got on the ball and did the first test at the end of February. I set up a better system for processing the milk. There’s just no good way for me to do it in the barn so I went out with my pail or stainless steel bowl, milked and then brought the milk in to weigh, sample, then filter. I jotted everything down in a notebook again then filled in the lab paperwork later. I love having my own hard copy of the amounts. As far as milking, I was still slow as Christmas but getting more practice and practice makes perfect…or at least less terrible. I knew to give myself PLENTY of time on milk test days.

I still had tape failures, which resulted in me saying crap on this tape and employing a complete separation from there on out. Which resulted in little escapees that found a weak spot in the fence in the dark and me scrambling around to grab the little milk thieves and toss them back in. But I knew now to not separate the does from the WHOLE herd if I could help it, just their kids. 

Only two of the does had been milked before 2023 but I was really tickled with how well they cooperated, overall. Rhea wanted to crouch at first. I had to milk into a jar because I couldn’t squeeze a short bowl under her big ol’ self when she decided to splat. Eventually, she got over that…and progressed to trying to stomp the ever-loving crap out of me. I prevailed and by late summer, I could say “leg” and give her a tap on said leg if she were standing too close and she would politely scootch until she was standing square. Though her teat size, length, and orifice were wonderful, her udder texture was very firm and gave my hands quite the workout. Joked it was like milking a saddle skirt.

Pearl and Beryl were zero trouble, ever. Incredibly proud of them. Just angels from the start. Very no-nonsense and figured out the routine quickly. Storm had been milked before without any issue. So she waited until the end of the year to decide she’d rather not be milked anymore, thank you, and was quite sassy about it. She could actually cross her back legs in an attempt to thwart the milk maid.

Pixie had the smallest teats of the bunch besides Toot but a super-soft texture even early in lactation when some of the other does had some udder edema. She was always mannerly to milk. Pixie did go to a new farm after five tests, where she’s a wonderful milker still.

Toot was still, well, a toot, and frankly, I just wanted to milk her enough to keep an eye on somatic cell count and the components because she was still hard as heck to milk; several times, I did not milk her out even close to completely. She freshened in May, well after all the others. I even bought a milk machine when I was desperate to milk them all well and before my hands were fully cooperating…and Toot’s teats were too small for the goat inflations to function. SIGH. At that point, I resigned myself to just getting good at hand milking. But Toot I still only milked on milk test days. Poor Toot had a rough year. Dealt with a mild case of staph dermatitis, had some cuts, and the girls are pretty rough on her - she’d only ever had a single before. Her right side felt like it had a small bunch of scar tissue right above the teat by fall. Despite the girls making her teats a little bigger, that right orifice is not larger because of that. But those girls grew like weeds and Toot never stopped eating or got mastitis, at least, and I cared for her udder as much as I could.

I remembered to take more pictures this time, and I am so glad I did! Udders can change so much in a lactation. I love having multiple photos of both full and empty udders. I can safely say that all of the does improved in milk down as their lactations progressed. Storm boasted an “empty dish rag udder” the whole time. Again, I saw fluctuations in protein and butterfat. Some that could be explained and improved with diet and some that seemed random. One month - April - the lab even sent a note to everyone that samples were being run the same but butterfats were unusually low.

Of course, if you’ve checked out this post - you know what happened after the second milk test. Oh Beryl, bless her heart. You can see her full lactation curve in a graph on that post. She became one of the very easiest goats to milk, and like I said, was just so mannerly from Day 1. If she'd had just another test or two with both sides functioning, she might have squeaked by on volume but I am just happy she survived and thrived after such a harrowing ordeal.

I felt like I’d learned more about diet and kept the girls in better condition throughout lactation in 2023 compared to 2022. It was interesting to see them decide they didn’t want something in their feed pan or want more of something else. We still had some hiccups, including the box of September milk samples getting shipped without a tracking number somehow. The post office couldn’t find said tracking number and thus could not find the package. But it did show up eventually, and the samples were still viable. We had severe droughts. We had at least one test day prefaced by a severe storm.

One particularly funny incident happened one summer morning. I was milking Rhea when I heard a vehicle and some awful rattling noise coming up the driveway and towards the barn. I paused and saw my uncle and grandpa pulling a trailer with Grandpa’s old riding lawn mower strapped down. I was so excited to have a reprieve from the push mower! I hurried to finish milking but Rhea was busy trying to see what was going on, too, and was doing her best to bob back and forth and get a glance out the window. She knew she wasn’t supposed to move her feet while being milked so she was leeeeaning as far as she could, back and forth, so I am trying my best just to hit the bowl with each milk stream. Grandpa and Uncle Larry got a kick out of that.

Since I am still a big fan of dam-raising, I left the kids, especially the doelings, on as long as I could to help me with milking (with the exception of Beryl’s kids). Of all the weird crap, Rhea’s daughter Banshee weaned herself when I sold her brother in May so Rhea was being milked twice a day from the end of May on. By July, I had to start milking twice a day on no fill on the others, while their respective doelings were still nursing. I could see an increase in production, especially in Pearl. She, Rhea, and Storm went over 1000lb by the September test. I didn’t actually wean the doelings until the end of October. From October until the end of November, I milked Rhea, Storm, Pearl, and Beryl twice a day. I started drying them off slowly at the end of November and they all had their dry dates right before Christmas. WHEW. Our first truly successful milk testing year! The icing on the cake was Pearl earning her *P for volume with MDGA - I didn’t realize until later that she’d missed butterfat by a mere pound! Rhea earned her *D through TMGR for both butterfat and volume. Storm earned her *D through TMGR for volume. I am incredibly proud of them!

The ten tests gave me such a good set of data, a much clearer idea of their respective lactation curves. I had gotten the hang of all the process and it was so much less stressful. I joked that my grip strength was so impressive I could crack a black walnut with my bare hands. Mainly, I was so happy we - me and the does - did it. We stuck with it and successfully completed milk testing for 2023.

Records are as follows: Hefty Goat Holler Storm *D - 305 days in milk pounds: 1339 and 46 pounds butterfat

Hefty Goat Holler Rhea *D - 305 days in milk pounds: 1330 and 57 pounds butterfat

Hefty Goat Holler Pearl 2*P - 305 days in milk pounds: 1249 and 43 pounds butterfat

GoGo's LoSt Pixie Dust - 128 days in milk pounds: 485 and 17 pounds butterfat

The S. Demeyer Genovese - 224 days in milk pounds: 694 and 29 pounds butterfat

Hefty Goat Holler Beryl - 305 days in milk pounds: 793 and 31 pounds butterfat

In 2024, I had far fewer does on test. Three completed their lactations: GoGo's SoMo Lovely Kisses, who is co-owned and just came to the herd the fall prior, and then Hefty Goat Holler Verbena and Hefty Goat Holler Layla. 2024 was a hard year as far as overall herd health. We had some issues with staph dermatitis in the herd - only Layla out of these three and thankfully it was mild - and it was just a wet nasty spring! I was late on the first test, not testing until the end of April even though Layla and Verbena had kidded back in February. It got busy again and I ended up testing twice in August because I didn’t test at all in July.

Layla had a bout of picky eating and a butterfat/protein inversion. All year she absolutely toed the line between earning her star for volume and just missing it. We worked REALLY hard to milk every drop every time after kids were weaned! We also spent several mornings playing hard to catch at milking time. She was quite polite about it but every once in a while she decided she was not coming in, thank you very much. But she did it! Layla ended her 304 with 1080lb of milk and 38lb of butterfat.

She's was just a second freshener and this dam line:

1) does not hit peak until at least 4 freshenings, in my experience and

2) does not milk super-heavy but will stay steady. She had some trouble with low butterfat the first couple months after freshening but we got that sorted and her BF peaked at an impressive 6.7%  - tied with her dam for the highest % I've had in my miniature LaManchas so far! Her highest volume was just 4.7lb.

It just wasn’t Lovely’s year, whether it was from being new here still or what, I am not sure. She is incredibly easy to milk with a lovely udder and is a sweet doe on the stand. Just a second freshener, and she did have some high somatic cell counts throughout though I never saw clinical signs. Lovely boasted a consistently high butterfat, peaking at 7.1% in November. Lovely ended her lactation with 730 pounds of milk and 30 pounds of butterfat in 252 days.

As she did with her first year on test, Verbena started super-high then dropped drastically. But I quit milking after three tests and a lab mess up that first year. We stuck with it this year and after she got over the fact that her buckling got sold and girls weaned, she started going back up. By November, she’d blown by her minimum volume requirement. She ended her 305 boasting 1460 pounds of milk and 65 pounds of butterfat, easily earning her star in each category. It was really interesting to see how it changed with kids being weaned and then how much her butterfat was compared to dam Hefty Goat Holler Storm *D - who never had a high butterfat amount. Verbena had a butterfat average of 4.5% and peaked at 6.1%.

Verbena's best daily total was the first month, while she was nursing triplets. My little spotty girl milked 7.6lb on milk test of the first month! Funnily enough, one of her lowest amounts - 3.1lb - would come just two months later. By the seventh month, she'd bounced all the way back to 4.5lb. 

Verbena now has the honor of the following, to date:

Highest Volume in a 305

Highest Butterfat Average

Highest 24hr Milk Volume

For a visual, I’ve made a graph of lactation curves of some of the does who’ve completed lactations. I think some people have the mistaken idea that a lactation is a plateau - sharp increase to peak, steady, then dry up. Some does will stay steady, sure, but I don't think any doe stays at exactly the same milk weight her entire lactation. I think it is interesting to point out how different Rhea and Storm's curves look but that they ended up only 9 pounds different for their 305 amounts. I clearly see the higher amounts when kids are demanding the most milk in the first few months, which makes perfect sense to me - kids need optimal milk 0-12 weeks old. Layla clearly had one of the lowest peaks (4.7lb) and overall curves but just exceeded her minimum requirement of 1078 - yes she BARELY made it with just two pounds to spare! (Minimum requirements are determined by age at freshening)

If you can't or don't want to get on official milk test, even taking a couple AM and PM weights a month for your own barn records will give you a much better idea of your doe's production! Weighing is so much more accurate than measuring volume, though volume is certainly helpful as far as barn records. You might be surprised how frothy with fat some of that milk is, making it weigh less. You weigh enough pails and you get pretty good at guessing the weights for fun! Milk testing is a long-term project, with herds testing throughout the year. Because of this, with MDGA, the Top Ten results are not announced until October of the following year. So in October 2025, the Top Ten lists for 2024 will come out. We didn't crack the top in 2023, but fingers crossed for Verbena's 2024 lactation!